Groundbreaking Journalist Sam Chu Lin Dead at 67

Harry Mok
March 7, 2006

Chu Lin has been a television and radio reporter since the 1960s, mostly in Southern California, and worked for CBS in the 1970s, all in a time when there were even fewer Asian Americans in broadcast journalism, and journalism in general, than there are now.

I've never lived in Southern California, so I'm not that familiar with Chu Lin's work. He sounds like someone who was a huge advocate for getting more and better stories about Asian Americans into the news. He was still working up till his death.

Anybody out there remember or know of some good stories he worked on?

Contributor: 

Harry Mok

Editor in chief

Editor in Chief Harry Mok wrote about growing up on a Chinese vegetable farm for the second issue of Hyphen and has been a volunteer editor since 2004. As a board member of the San Francisco and New York chapters of the Asian American Journalists Association, Harry has recruited and organized events for student members. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a graduate student instructor in the Asian American Studies Department.

Comments

Comments

Bert Case wrote on Tue, 03/07/2006 - 4:46pm
I am a TV news anchor/reporter at WLBT-TV Jackson, Mississippi. Sam was a native Mississippian, from the Delta and we worked at a radio station in Oxford, MS ( WSUH-AM) in the late 1950s when were were both at the University of Mississippi. Sam was a DJ and a news anchor at WSUH - he was very good at it at his young college age. He dreamed of being a network television correspondent and was confident he could do it. He was very proud of his heritage and wanted everyone to know he was Chinese,that he grew up in Mississippi and he wanted to tell the story of his people which he eventually did on CBS, for PBS and stations in California. Sam was a very precise reporter who wanted to know every fact he could learn about a subject;he was driven to do it better than anyone else and would always think of angles no one else would. We maintained our friendship over all these years; he came to dinner at my home about 4-years ago. I shall miss my friend Sam Chu Lin very much. Bert Case....WLBT-TV Jackson, Mississippi
Nina Ha wrote on Wed, 03/08/2006 - 12:49am
I met Sam years ago when I was an aspiring news reporter working as a producer at ABC News0ne in Los Angeles. Sam was such a consummate professional. He filled in every once in a while as the satellite feed reporter going live for ABC stations across the country, but he was so humble about it. I really admired his easy-going nature and the conversations we had. He gave me advice about breaking into the business. As I began working as a reporter and later anchor, it made me feel good knowing that I might be a decent Asian American role model for someone the way that Sam Chu Lin had been for me. Nina Ha, former journalist (KAPP-TV, KMTR-TV, KBAK-TV)
John Donvan wrote on Wed, 03/08/2006 - 9:16am
Sam was the force behind one of the Nightline programs I am most proud of,on the topic of Anti-China hysteria at the time of the Wen Ho Lee case. He was relentless. He was decent. He was modest.He was right.
William Wong wrote on Thu, 03/09/2006 - 12:40pm
Sam was a terrific reporter whose energy and tenacity were outstanding. He was one of the first, if the not the first, Asian American national network TV reporters. Then he moved into local TV reporting, while also writing for the English-language Asian American press on a wide variety of important Asian American issues. I admired his tenacity and his fairness. Over the years, he and I talked about becoming irrelevant to the younger, hipper Asian American media types, but he kept on truckin', which is why his sudden passing is so sad for the continual chronicle of yellow political scene.
George Lewinski wrote on Mon, 03/13/2006 - 10:07am
Some of Sam's colleagues are working toward setting of a scholarship in his name at U-C Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. And we would be appreciative of help. There must be many hundreds, if not thousands, who were inspired, helped, and assisted by Sam. We want to hear from them.Thanks you.